1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a food astringency evaluating method and astringency evaluating apparatus, and more specifically it relates to a method and apparatus which are useful for quantitative evaluation of the astringency of foods such as beer, wine, green tea and the like.
2. Related Background Art
Food flavor is judged based on human gustation, and traditional evaluation of food flavor has generally been carried out by organoleptic evaluation tests. An organoleptic evaluation test is an evaluation conducted with prescribed evaluation parameters using a sensory scale known in the field of psychology (psychophysics), such as a category scale, magnitude scale, labeled magnitude scale, etc. (Green, B. et al., Chemical Senses, 18, 683(1993)). In the case of beer, for example, several types of beer samples are prepared and taste-tested by subjects, and the taste is evaluated with respect to the parameters of “bitterness strength or residue”, “astringency strength or residue”, “richness”, “smoothness”, etc., based on the gustation of the subjects.
Of these gustation parameters, “astringency” is an extremely important factor in evaluating excellent flavor for beer, wine, green tea and the like, and a quantitative evaluation of astringency is preferred for the development of such foods that are recently being subjected to an ever widening diversity of personal tastes.